#76: The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team

Do we really need a retrospective every sprint? by The Humanizing Work Show

Nicole Forsythe on Career Transitions, Agile Coaching, and Antarctic Exploration: In this episode Peter and Richard talk with Nicole Forsythe. Nicole is a librarian turned leader of Agile coaches. We discuss a variety of topics including: how work is broken and what to do about it; navigating career transitions; practical advice for agile coaches; and what we can learn from the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. The conversation was interesting and practical, and we’re thrilled to share it. Episode page: https://humanizingwork.com/nicole-forsythe-on-career-transitions-agile-coaching-and-antarctic-exploration/ Connect with Humanizing Work:https://twitter.com/HumanizingWorkhttps://twitter.com/rslawrence/https://twitter.com/tptman/https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingworkhttps://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

53 min listen

Does Everything in our Backlog need to be a User Story?: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, “How do we know whether an item on our Product Backlog should be a User Story or a Task?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/backlog-stories-vs-tasks/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

8 min listen

The Problem with the Phrase "Don't Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions": In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “I was in a 1:1 with my boss and I shared a problem I was observing on the team. She reminded me of her motto: ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.’ The challenge was that I didn’t have a solution. Should I wait to share the problem until I’ve come up with a solution?” They also get into why managers shouldn’t say this, even if their intentions are good, and what to do instead. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/dont-bring-me-problems-bring-me-solutions/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

8 min listen

Why we don't like epics for agile teams: Peter and Richard mentioned in an earlier episode that they’re not fans of epics for agile teams and product owners. In this episode, they explain why and what to do instead. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-we-dont-like-epics/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

3 min listen

Why We Don't Love the Five Whys: In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into the popular “5 Whys” root cause analysis technique, including the limitations of the technique and why the question “why?’ can get you in trouble. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/whats-wrong-with-the-5-whys/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

5 min listen

These Six Things Improve How Teams Work: The health of teams has a direct impact on organizational results as well as on individuals’ happiness in their work. In this episode, Richard and Peter outline the 6 conditions that researchers J Richard Hackman and Ruth Wegeman have discovered are critical for a team to be healthy and effective. They also cover what you can do to contribute to those conditions, whether you’re a leader or a junior team member. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/these-six-things-improve-how-teams-work/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

14 min listen

Why the Effort to Humanize Work Is Worth It: Leading the kind of culture change that produces an engaged, empowered, human-centric organization can be exhausting and difficult. In this episode, Hart Shafer, the CEO of TheraSpecs, explains why it’s worth it. This is an excerpt from our Deep Dive episode on Hiring, check out the show notes for links to that full episode, which is packed with good ideas for anyone who leads or participates in the hiring process. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-the-effort-to-humanize-work-is-worth-it/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

Team engagement doesn't benefit from "Enforced Team Fun”: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: what’s your take on “enforced team fun”? Many teams have an expectation that everyone will participate in things like birthday celebrations and morale building events, despite the strong possibility that some on the team would experience stress and anxiety, and no evidence that holding those events increases engagement on the team. There are things outside of individual task execution that should be expected on a team, but “enforced team fun” isn’t going to help and is likely hurting. Episode Page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/what-many-leaders-get-wrong-when-trying-to-build-team-engagement/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

5 min listen

How Does A "User Manual For Me" Work In Practice?: In this episode, Richard answers a question from a friend in the non-profit world: “I came across a template for creating a ‘user guide for working with me.’ Are these used in the business world, and if so, do they work out in practice?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/should-you-make-a-user-manual-for-me/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

The Peter Principle: Is management doomed to be incompetent?: The Peter Principle is the idea that people get promoted until they hit the level where they’re no longer competent enough to get promoted again. In this episode, Richard and Peter discuss what this means, whether it’s always true, and how management can escape the Peter Principle. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/the-peter-principle-management/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

#105 How Coaches Benefit from PO Skills (plus how to develop yours): Coaches usually focus on skills like facilitation, team formation, and conflict resolution. In this episode, Peter and Richard argue that none of those things matter if a team doesn’t get product ownership right, so coaches need to be fluent in product skills and able to coach their clients to get better in that area. Included in our conversation: The risk of over-focus in skill development Why being able to coach PO skills doesn’t necessarily make you a good PO Why fluency in this area is a must-have for any ScrumMaster or coach Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/how-coaches-benefit-from-po-skills/ Share a challenge or episode idea: mailbag@humanizingwork.com Connect with Humanizing Work: https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ by The Humanizing Work Show

17 min listen

Effective Sprint Reviews: In this episode, Richard and Peter dig into how to have an effective Sprint Review meeting. Great Sprint Reviews, achieve 3 goals and answer 3 key questions. Learn how do accomplish this on your team. (And discover why “Sprint Demo” is too limited a name for this meeting.) While this is explicitly Scrum-focused, it’s really about how to have a meeting to review a body of work as a team, whether you’re using Scrum or not. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/effective-sprint-reviews-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

Vivian Rhoads on Agile Innovation for Consumer Packaged Goods: In this episode, Richard and Peter interview Vivian Rhoads, President of the Women’s Health business unit at Pharmavite. Vivian has adapted ideas and practices from agile software development to build highly-productive innovation teams in the vitamin and supplement space. Vivian’s work at Pharmavite reduced their cycle time for new innovations from a few years down to a few months and increased throughput from a 1 or 2 new products each year to a few dozen. This episode has great insights for anyone trying to take agile beyond the typical software context. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/agile-cpg-innovation-with-vivian-rhoads/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

66 min listen

What’s the right size for an agile team? (Mailbag): In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, what’s the best size for an agile team? The Scrum Guide says 5-9, but how does the Humanizing Work team think about it? Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/whats-the-right-size-for-an-agile-team/ Connect with Humanizing Work:https://twitter.com/HumanizingWorkhttps://twitter.com/rslawrence/https://twitter.com/tptman/https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingworkhttps://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

7 min listen

Five Lessons in Career Development Peter Learned in his Career: This episode includes an excerpt from one of our monthly Humanizing Work Conference Alumni community sessions. In the session, Peter shared a 20 minute presentation about his circuitous career path and five lessons he’s learned along the way. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/5-lessons-in-career-development Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

20 min listen

Why Scrum works when it works: Peter and Richard are often asked: “Why do you guys like Scrum so much? It seems like a lot of meetings, and I see a lot of teams struggling with it. But you recommend it for a lot of situations, and it seems like you’ve thought a lot about it.” In this episode, they explain why Scrum works when it works and why it’s still their favorite approach for product development, including outside of software development. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/why-scrum-works-when-it-works/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

10 min listen

How To Have a More Effective Daily Scrum Tomorrow: In this episode, Richard and Peter give 3 quick tips you can use to have a more effective Daily Scrum right away. Too many teams waste this important meeting on a boring status report instead of using it to create team alignment and make every day matter. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/daily-scrum-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Deep Dive–A Breakthrough in Hiring: Hiring is hard everywhere. But it’s particularly challenging for human-centric organizations that want to hire for self-organization and collaboration. The differences between good and bad candidates are hard—or impossible—to determine from resume reviews and traditional job interviews. In this episode, Peter and Richard share a breakthrough hiring approach developed by their friends Hart Shafer and Annette Zinky of TheraSpecs. You’ll hear the story of how and why Hart and Annette developed a new way of hiring, and you’ll learn how to implement a similar method to transform your own hiring. Another client who just tried a little of this approach for a key position told us, “It felt like I suddenly had interviewing superpowers!” by The Humanizing Work Show

79 min listen

Dealing with Interruptions on a Scrum Team: In this episode, Richard answers the question: “Our team is trying to use Scrum, but we get a lot of interruptions, a lot of work that pops up mid-sprint. How do we handle that kind of thing well?” He explains how to borrow a couple of concepts from Kanban to accommodate emergent work on a Scrum team in a healthy way. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/dealing-with-interruptions-on-a-scrum-team/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Making & Communicating Decisions in Uncertainty with the 3ID Pattern: Leaders often have to make difficult decisions in the presence of uncertainty and complexity. And they need to involve others in the process—sometimes to make a decision collaboratively, sometimes just to bring everyone along. In this episode, Peter introduces the 3ID Pattern, a structure for making decisions in uncertain times, which also works for communicating clearly about a decision that has already been made. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/3id-decision-making-pattern/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

16 min listen

Measuring the Success of Agile Adoption: In this episode, Richard and Peter take on two related questions: “Can those Agile success surveys be believed?” and “How should we think about measuring the success of our own Agile adoption?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/measuring-the-success-of-agile-adoption/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

12 min listen

Having Uncomfortable Conversations on a Team: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “We want to get better at having uncomfortable conversations on our team. We either avoid them or don’t handle them well. How can we improve at this?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/having-uncomfortable-conversations-on-a-team/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

8 min listen

Overcoming Resistance to Change: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question, “How do you overcome resistance to change?” Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/overcoming-resistance-to-change/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Couch to Running 45 Miles Across the Grand Canyon by The Humanizing Work Show

35 min listen

How does my work as a developer change in Scrum?: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “Our team is adopting Scrum, how does my role (as a developer) change?” Obviously, you’ll be doing Scrum now and you weren’t before, but beyond the obvious, there are three big ways you can expect your work to change. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/developer-in-scrum/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

6 min listen

Should Managers Be In Retrospectives?: In this episode, Richard and Peter answer the question: “What are your thoughts on including managers in retrospectives?” Even if a manger wants to be helpful, the answer is complicated… Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/managers-in-retros/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

10 min listen

Melissa Boggs: Changing the Rules for Work: In this episode, Richard and Peter talk with leadership coach and speaker Melissa Boggs. We dig into a range of topics, including her former role as Chief ScrumMaster at Scrum Alliance, the lesser-known challenges of leadership, coaching and being coached, and the ways the rules of work need to change to create more human-centric organizations. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/melissa-boggs-interview/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

71 min listen

#89: Collaboration and Coordination are NOT the Same Thing – Here’s Why It Matters: In this episode, Richard explains the distinction between collaborating and coordinating, when to do one or the other, and the implications for team structure, tools, and geography. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/collaborate-vs-coordinate-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork mailbag@humanizingwork.com by The Humanizing Work Show

9 min listen

Feature Mining Q&A: Feature Mining is a technique for figuring out where to start on a big, complex idea. Following up on a Feature Mining webinar on February 6, 2023, in this episode, Richard and Peter answer questions from the webinar and from other workshops on the topic of Feature Mining. If you’re not familiar with the Feature Mining technique, don’t worry, there’s a short intro to it before the Q&A. Episode page: https://www.humanizingwork.com/feature-mining-qa-episode/ Connect with Humanizing Work: https://twitter.com/HumanizingWork https://twitter.com/rslawrence/ https://twitter.com/tptman/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/humanizingwork https://www.facebook.com/HumanizingWork by The Humanizing Work Show

36 min listen

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#76: The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team

#76: The 15 minutes that reveal the health of your team

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